Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan For starters, Chicago filmmaker Jennifer Reeder is an accomplished filmmaker with several short films behind her shown at numerous film festivals around the world. Her latest film is her first feature and was selected for the Frameline Film Festival. Parts of it were actually shown at an American film festival in Poland where works in progress are given a completion support. She got the attention of a programmer from Tribeca who took it in and the Berlin Film festival selected it knowing she had served on a jury there before and shown her short films. Reeder is a dedicated hardworking artist filmmaker the mother of three young children and she has made an enchanting and provocative narrative feature called Knives and Skin. In the opening scenes we see a mother holding a huge table knife upright walking towards her daughter's room. It’s a tease because we are so programmed for this kind of imagery in horror films, but actually the mother is picking the l...

Elle Fanning By Moira Sullivan The jury members for the 72:e Festival de Cannes were unanimously taken in by Palme d’Or winner The Parasite by South Korean director BONG Jo ho. In the first of its kind press conference Jury President Quentin Tarantino explained why Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 won the palme d’or. Since then the jury motivates why it gives out its award. Atlantics by French filmmaker Matti Diop, according to Italian jury member Alice Rohrwacher , last year's best screenplay award winner for Happy as Lazzaro , won the heart of the jury, a film about men and young boys who die at sea and the women they leave behind at shore. Although the awards this year were given to films that concern social justice, or injustice according to Jury President Alejandro Iñárritu “cinematic decisions” were involved with the process and he emphasized that “cinema has to speak for itself”. The jury was diverse including the youngest jury member at Cannes in history,...